all of that is true, but markdown targets HTML as its "native backend", if you will. it is not feasible to render markdown -> pdf without having an intermediate

all of that is true, but markdown targets HTML as its "native backend", if you will. it is not feasible to render markdown -> pdf without having an intermediate HTML representation. this is clear from the fact that HTML can be inlined in a markdown document; this is part of the spec (in so much as there even is a "spec" for markdown, anyway).